Game Night

It's game night tonight and one of my buddies took over the DM screen for the third part of a long-term off-and-on campaign.

Our 3.5/Pathfinder home rules are serving up some battle-damage goodness for our characters tonight. We recently adopted some modified Pathfinder "called shot" rules and walked right into a situation where we could put them into play.

But first, a bit about the new table we have. Our regular game is hosted at a specially-built game room at one of the other guy's homes. We've been playing there on a regular basis for several years surrounding an old dining room table. We've eschewed battle mats in favor of a digital projector mounted on the ceiling shining downward onto the table. The DM projects the map through that onto the table. It's worked well, but the resolution hasn't been the greatest.

Two weeks ago the projector died.

Enter the Mother of Invention. Our current DM donated an old dining room table with removable leaves. We kicked in for a 40" LCD TV which the host then mounted inside the table. A piece of plexiglass on top, the plug into the DM's laptop, and VOILA: instant electronic battle mat. The table is still under construction, with some amenities and niceties being added, but it works for tonight. Pictures forthcoming once the final touches have been made.

So: Called shots. In our party, we have a Dwarven Sonnlinor (a modified specialty priest from 2E house-ruled into 3.x), a Dwarven Knight, a Human Warmage, and a Centaur Ranger.

We entered a room with an undead beholder, a devourer, and some other lesser baddies. All of our beefing-up spells went bye-bye as we climbed up the stairs and entered the beholder's anti-magic ray. My character, the Sonnlinor, leaped on the centaur's back, who promptly charged at the beholder. A called shot on the central eye followed by a natural 20 and 74 HP later (with an Undead Bane weapon, using Smite Evil), and the undead beholder lay in soggy pieces around the room. This was followed by a natural 20 on a ray attack from the Warmage and the devourer was disintegrated. Our Knight then also rolled a natural 20.

I followed that up a few rounds later with a natural 20 on a Shadow.

We're calling it the Blessing of the New Television. Three natural 20s in a row. The DM is calling it a "curse" for some odd reason. The DM, of course, deflated our celebration by reminding us that he could now use the "called shot" against us in the future.

Party pooper.